No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn

by Teen Vogue

Last Thursday, on the eve of their first-ever Brooklyn, NY show, The Beastie Boys held an intimate press conference at the Soho House to talk about their new instrumental album, The Mix Up, and their tour. And I was one of the extremely lucky journalists in attendance.

The whole thing honestly gave me a stomachache. . . in a good way. I remember my best friend Kristy playing License to Ill at full volume as she careened around corners, the week after she got her driver⿿s license. When I was in college, doing a summer internship at Time Out New York magazine, one of the best things I got to do was deliver a package to Nasty Little Man (the Beastie's longtime PR peeps who I had read was the inspiration for their then-just-released Hello Nasty). Last but not least my first concert EVER was the second Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1997, headlined by, you guessed it, the Beastie Boys.

ANYWAY, I was nervous. But there were enough other people in the room to calm me down and when Adam "MCA" Yauch, Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, and Michael "Mike-D" Diamond came into the room, I quickly got in the zone. Here's some of what went down (as well as a blurry photo I took.):

Check out Check Your Head: MCA and Ad-Rock both name-checked it as the album they're most proud of. "We were trying things we'd never done before," said Ad-Rock.

Mike D. is Still Alive: When asked what the most outrageous rumor they'd heard about themselves, Mike D. replied that aside from his purported familial connection to Neil and Dustin Diamond (both absolutely no relation), the craziest thing he's heard over the years is that he was dead. "I've been rumored to be dead a few times," he said. "But not in a while, which is strange because I'm getting older."

Do D.I.Y.: "I'm excited to see what people are making on their home computers," Mike-D said, of the rise of self-made music stars and the role of MySpace. "It's the equivalent of bands independently financing their own seven-inch."

On The Mix-Up: Though the Beasties latest album is a totally instrumental collection, it wasn't meant to be that way. "We wanted to record some songs with just instruments and then we kind of just kept doing it," said Ad-Rock. "We talked about putting vocals on the Mix Up. But as we were recording, it just wound up without them," said MCA.